


Vale Of Shadows

by she_stans_villains



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Billy's a Sad Mess, Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Facials, Gross Intimacy, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Possessed Billy, Recreational Drug Use, Steve's Hero Complex, The Mindflayer - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 17:24:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19446133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/she_stans_villains/pseuds/she_stans_villains
Summary: At the very quietest moment of the night, when both the interior of Steve’s room and the world outside his window seemed completely silent and still, Steve saw something that made his blood run cold;A whispery-thin, greyish black vein pulsating on the delicate underside of Billy’s left wrist. For a split second, it appeared to be climbing up Billy’s wrist toward his elbow, webbing out in different directions like the roots of a tree. Then it was gone.Steve told himself it was a trick of the light. He told himself that he had been awake too long and was seeing things. Yet fear poured itself into the pit of his stomach, slippery and dark like oil.(Post-S2 Possessed!Billy fic.)





	Vale Of Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there. To anyone concerned about the dubcon warning in this fic, please see the end notes for more info. Thanks :)

As Steve lays in his bed in the dead of night with Billy snoring softly beside him, he feels surprisingly at peace with the unexpected turns his life is taking. Watching Billy’s chest rise and fall with each breath, his dirty-blonde curls fanned out on Steve’s pillow, Steve wonders if things were happening exactly the way they’re supposed to after all. 

Billy usually never stayed with Steve after sex for long, mumbling excuses while halfway out of the door or sometimes not saying anything at all before exiting unceremoniously. That night had been different. That night, Billy had seemed nervous and on edge, not his usual cocky and confident self. At first, Steve wondered if Billy was keyed up from a fight with Neil, had searched Billy’s body for bruises or other physical evidence as discreetly as he could. But as far as Steve had seen, fights with Neil always manifested in anger, white-hot rage burning in Billy’s eyes and something quieter lurking just behind the rage, something like a deep and resigned sadness that Steve couldn’t quite name. What Steve saw in Billy’s eyes that night was something else entirely. Billy was skittish, reflexes slowed almost to the point of clumsiness. The look in his eyes was something more like haunted, and he brought that same haunted, nervous energy to the sex they had.He rode Steve with frenetic urgency, slamming himself up and down on Steve’s dick like something was chasing him to the finish line, like he would die if he didn’t come. Or maybe like he wanted to forget about something, to drug himself on sex and lose himself with Steve.

When Billy finally collapsed, exhausted, on top of Steve, He didn’t make his usual quick escape. Instead, he rolled slightly to the side and gathered up two big handfuls of Steve’s comforter, wrapping it around himself and leaving Steve’s entire right side exposed to the air. 

“Fuckin’ tired, man…” Billy mumbled, eyelids already starting to drift closed. “So goddamn tired. Like I just ran a marathon.”

“Yeah? You fucked like you were running a marathon” Steve replied, reaching across Billy and trying in vain to tug some of the stolen blankets back to his side of the bed.

Billy groaned, placing his palm on Steve’s cheek to playfully shove him away. “You think you’re real cute, huh?” he grumbled, begrudgingly releasing a fraction of blanket, just enough for Steve to tuck in around his body.

Steve thought about how Billy always knew the right thing to say. A smooth talker, full of snappy comebacks and effortless charisma. Everything Billy said seemed like truth, even when Steve knew it wasn’t. Steve, on the other hand, had a hard time expressing himself. Among his classmates he had a superficial level of charm, was able to sweet-talk girls and crack jokes along with his friends. But in the classroom Steve was lost for words, struggling to articulate what was in his head and put it down on paper. In conversations that really mattered, like with Nancy or discussions with his parents about “the future”, Steve always said the wrong thing.

Despite this, Steve had tried his best that night to ask Billy what was bothering him. He knew that he couldn’t outright ask Billy ‘what’s wrong?’ or ‘are you okay?”, that it would put Billy on the defensive and make him retreat further. Steve decided to take a run at him anyway.

“So...how was your day?” Steve asked, trying to see what Billy would offer freely.

Billy’s head was turned away but Steve could still hear his quiet snort of laughter, could practically see him rolling his eyes.

“Go to sleep, Harrington.”

Steve didn’t sleep all night, his eyes stinging slightly in the bright overhead light from his ceiling light fixture. Even though it was still dark, chirping birds outside Steve’s window were the first signs of Hawkins stirring awake, and it wouldn’t be long before dawn broke. That night was the first time Billy had ever slept over at Steve’s enormous empty house, so it might have been too early for him to notice Steve’s odd pattern of bedtime behavior. If Billy had noticed Steve’s inability to sleep or the fact that Steve left his light on when they had settled into bed, he had chosen not to mention anything. 

Steve couldn’t fall asleep, so he watched Billy instead. Billy’s breathing slowed, the tension he always seemed to be holding in his shoulders going slack. He fell asleep. Steve listened to the birds outside, the hum of his air conditioner, the scritchy sound of Billy scratching at his arm mid-sleep. Slowly, these sounds grew quieter to Steve’s ears as his brain got used to the atmospheric noise in the room and tuned them out.

At the very quietest moment of the night, when both the interior of Steve’s room and the world outside his window seemed completely silent and still, Steve saw something that made his blood run cold:

A whispery-thin, greyish black vein pulsating on the delicate underside of Billy’s left wrist. For a split second, it appeared to be climbing up Billy’s wrist toward his elbow, webbing out in different directions like the roots of a tree. Then it was gone.

Steve told himself it was a trick of the light. He told himself that he had been awake too long and was seeing things. Yet fear poured itself into the pit of his stomach, slippery and dark like oil.

///

Billy wakes up in Steve’s bed at the crack of dawn, disoriented and scared for a few moments before adjusts his eyes to Steve’s ugly plaid wallpaper, smells Steve’s shampoo on the pillow. He’s groggy as hell despite getting nearly a full night’s sleep, and his left arm feels sore and strangely taut, like the skin is pulled too tight. He pokes experimentally at the skin on the inside of his forearm and is surprised at how cold it feels to the touch. It looks normal at least, so he figures he slept on it wrong and chalks it up to his limbs being tangled up with Steve’s throughout the night. Billy feels Steve’s hot breath on the back of neck, his fingertips dancing so carefully, so feather-light along Billy’s shoulder. It’s almost as if Steve knows somehow that Billy’s a light sleeper, that his chest seizes up in fear if he’s woken abruptly, and is trying not to scare him. 

Billy starts shifting backwards on the bed with the slowest, subtlest of movements, trying to pretend that he’s just stirring in his sleep. Tentatively, he takes a chance by resting his head on Steve’s shoulder and it pays off. Steve wraps him up in his long arms and presses his lips to Billy’s head, breathing in deeply. Billy breathes in deeply as well. Something flutters inside his chest; a tiny, happy place inside him. He settles into Steve’s touch, still feigning sleep.

Billy knows he’s on the precipice of something big, like he’s standing on the edge of a cliff. He knows he’ll never survive if he plunges into the abyss below, but somehow, he wants to jump anyway. 

He thinks about Steve’s self-conscious little smile when Billy teases him or calls him “pretty boy”. Steve’s big, honest brown eyes. The way Steve’s smooth, flat belly trembles and goosebumps pop up on his arms when he takes his clothes off. The way Steve’s underarms smell, a mixture of sweat and woodsy, masculine deodorant that makes Billy’s dick hard. The way Steve listens to Billy complain about Neil and Max and Billy’s asshole boss at the public pool, how he never interrupts or offers unsolicited advice, never asks why he doesn’t try to play nice with Max or tell Neil to go fuck himself.

It’s getting harder and harder to hide his feelings and he keeps letting things slip. He’s losing his grip like he’s holding an enormous bundle of balloons. It takes everything Billy has to tighten up his grip on one balloon, like not spending the night with Steve after they fuck, when he wants to stay beside Steve so fucking badly, when the very last thing he wants is to go home. He tries so hard that his grip slackens somewhere else and he loses another balloon, like kissing Steve in the Camaro in the dark, when he should be pushing him away, making his excuses. 

The cruel irony was that Billy had been nudging Steve for nearly a year, goading him, trying to get his attention. He’d sensed a connection with Steve the very first day he saw him at Hawkins High. When they had crossed paths for the first time on the second floor hallway, their eyes met for a long moment and Billy thought he felt a spark of electricity, a spark of attraction between himself and the rumoured King of Hawkins High, But his instincts had been wrong before. He’d gotten himself into trouble that way, before. That year, he almost gave up on Steve so many times, had almost cut his losses and chased after someone else, someone easier. Maybe someone like Phillip, the skinny little sophomore who always stared a bit too long at Billy in the locker room showers. But he had a feeling about Steve and he persisted, and now Billy has more than he bargained for, because he’s falling in love.

Billy’s confused. He feels overwhelmed and chased down by Steve’s aggressive kindness. 

Billy tried to push Steve away every time he felt Steve getting too close, but at the same time he was starved for Steve’s love and he bloomed beneath it like a flower in the sun. Although Steve was as committed to keeping their secret as Billy was, he never failed to find ways to show he cared, and it was driving Billy fucking crazy. 

Steve was the one and only person who acknowledged Billy’s birthday that year. He surprised Billy by driving them out to the edge of town and parking in a quiet, secluded little valley near Callaghan’s mushroom farm. There they sat on the still-warm hood of the Beemer and Steve pulled out a six-pack, a bag of shitty Hawkins weed and the new Motörhead tape Billy had been eyeing for weeks. Billy could hear the quiet rush of water trickling over the rocks in a nearby creek, could see vultures lazily circling overhead against the setting sun. With his heart in his throat, he’d gruffly thanked Steve and tried not to show how much it all meant to him. “Didn’t have to do all this shit” he’d gumbled, not daring to meet Steve’s eyes.

Steve had laughed like he could see right through Billy’s facade. “Whatever. Happy birthday, big guy” he half-whispered, snaking his big hands into Billy’s curls and tugging him over for a kiss.

As Billy lays next to Steve pretending to be asleep so he can accept Steve’s embrace in his too-warm bed, he feels like everything inside him is tangling together at once and splitting his spirit into pieces; his fear, his anger, his love for Steve, all the times he’s been betrayed before, his desire to leave Hawkins and never look back, his childlike hope at the idea that he and Steve could be together, all fusing into an emotion with no name. 

By the time Steve is fully awake and sitting upright, Billy is letting the honey in his heart turn into hardness again. He can’t be seen without his armour. There’s too much at stake.

“Mornin’, Billy” Steve groans, meshing his fingers together and stretching both arms over his head. “Nice to see you’re still here.”

Steve presses his lips together regretfully almost immediately after making this remark, like he realized too late that by mentioning their shared sleeping arrangement, he was possibly ensuring that it never happened again. Billy found himself feeling strangely charmed by Steve’s stupidity. _Cute,_ his brain unhelpfully supplies. Billy inwardly rolls his eyes at how far he’s fallen, from local badass and usurper King of Hawkins High to a sentimental idiot with a stupid crush on another sentimental idiot.

“Whatever, man” Billy shrugs. “Too tired to drive home last night. Where’s the john?”

“Down the hall to your right, across from the linen closet” Steve replies, unnecessarily pointing in the right direction.

Billy is caught in a wave of vertigo as soon as he shucks the blankets and stands up. He stumbles, hand catching on Steve’s bedpost for support. Steve makes a half-formed noise of concern and reaches for him, but Billy waves his hand away and tries to play it off like he just tripped in the bunched-up blankets on the floor. Steve shrugs and Billy carefully makes his way to the bathroom. Inside, it takes the utmost concentration to keep his stream of piss inside the toilet bowl as swells of dizziness continue to crest over him. While washing his hands, he has the brief yet terrifying feeling that the room had suddenly turned upside down, that he’s standing on the ceiling and the water was disappearing up the sink drain instead of down. 

The feeling was gone, as soon as it came. 

Had Billy taken some bad drugs at some point and was just feeling the after-effects now? He thought back to over a year earlier, to a slightly discoloured tab of LSD purchased from a sketchy-looking dealer at Venice Beach. Had it been defective somehow? Was he having an acid flashback after all this time? 

Billy stares himself down in the mirror, unable to focus and hallucinating little black veins crawling up the sides of his face. After a few minutes spent fighting back nausea and willing himself to pull it together, Billy straightens his posture, brushes his teeth with Steve’s toothbrush, splashes some cold water on his face and plasters on a neutral expression for the benefit of Steve the Babysitter. The last thing Billy needs is Steve mother-henning over him.

Billy heads downstairs carefully, still dizzy and dying of thirst all of a sudden. He throws open the door of Steve’s enormous fridge and grabs the first option he sees, a large pitcher of cherry Kool-Aid. He takes the lid off and drinks straight from the pitcher. It’s delicious and cold but weirdly, it isn’t slaking his thirst the way it normally does and he’s finding it difficult to stop drinking. Kool-Aid slips over the lip of the pitcher and runs down his neck and collarbones as he chugs and chugs, staining his white undershirt. He doesn’t see Steve enter the kitchen but he hears him, his footsteps approaching in the hall and his voice from somewhere near the doorway.

Steve scoffs. “I see you’re making yourself right at home. You gonna save any of that Kool-Aid for me? And did you use my toothbrush?”

Billy doesn’t stop drinking, just throws up his middle finger in the direction of Steve’s voice. When the pitcher is finally empty he sets it down on the counter a bit harder than he means to, the loud clink of glass against marble punctuating the quiet of the kitchen. Billy’s got bright red juice dripping down his chin, thirst finally quenched, slightly out of breath from the non-stop drinking and when he finally meets Steve’s brown eyes, they’re wide and concerned. Steve’s fully dressed, in a soft green t-shirt and expensive-looking jeans.

“Dude, did you just drink that whole thing? You should take it easy.”

Billy levels a look at Steve, saying nothing and letting the cool disdain in his expression speak for itself. Steve falters a bit.

“I just - you know, ‘cause the acidity might upset your stomach. Not to mention the sugar.” he mumbles, sheepishly scratching the back of his head.

Something cruel inside Billy decides to try and hit Steve where it hurts. 

“Nice SAT word, Harrington. Someone paying attention in science for once? Get off my fucking back”.

Billy hadn’t intended to be mean to Steve. It had just slipped out, almost against his will. 

He can see Steve make a conscious decision to not rise to Billy’s bait. Steve frowns for half a second, then his expression shutters into something calm and blank. 

“Whatever. I think there’s a few more packets in the pantry if you’re still thirsty.”

Light pours into the place in Billy’s mind that was occupied by darkness just a moment before. He regrets what he’s done, hates that he’s disappointed and hurt Steve. He feels off-kilter and confused, and he wishes he could start the day over from the beginning. As things stand, he hopes it’s not too late to turn their whole day around. Given that Steve has the day off and Billy doesn’t work until 3:00, he knows the perfect way to distract them both. 

When he reaches over to bury his hand in Steve’s soft hair, Steve doesn’t shy away, but he doesn’t smile either. He’s staring at Billy, who can see the subtle movements of Steve’s eyes when they shift focus from Billy’s left eye to his right, like they’re searching for something. 

Billy loves when Steve looks at him, but Billy’s darkness doesn’t. It hates being scrutinized, doesn’t want to be discovered by Steve or anyone else. Not yet.

It twists Billy’s hand up more tightly in Steve’s hair, dragging him forward and crashing their lips together. Steve grunts, stumbling backwards slightly. But soon he’s melting into the kiss, sliding his hands up the back of Billy’s undershirt.

Billy’s in control now. He grabs Steve’s face with both hands and kisses him with everything he has, starving, licking into his mouth. When he pulls away to kiss the sensitive spot behind Steve’s ear, Steve’s gasping, clinging hard to Billy’s shirt. Billy gently guides Steve backwards towards the sofa, mouthing at his neck and burying his nose in Steve’s shiny hair. There, at the base of Steve’s neck, close to his scalp, is Steve’s smell. It’s the smell that makes his heart hammer in his chest when Steve passes him in the hallway, a shared moment of heated eye contact the only evidence that Billy and Steve are more than former-enemies-turned-casual-acquaintances. He steals big whiffs of it when Steve leaves his sweatshirt in Billy’s car. 

Billy’s darkness hates Steve’s smell. It hates how the smell tethers Billy in humanity, tethers him to Steve. It hates how the smell calls out to Billy when he’s lying awake in bed at night . But the darkness craves Steve’s body heat. It shoves Steve down onto the sofa, leaving Steve slightly winded. It roughly tears Steve’s t-shirt off, the seams audibly ripping. It throws Billy’s leg over Steve’s lap and crawls onto him, rubbing Billy’s body all over Steve’s like a cat in an attempt to absorb Steve’s body heat.

“Damn, Billy” Steve laughs, a bit nervously. “You’re really hot for me today, huh?”

The darkness ignores Steve, sliding Billy down onto his knees on the fluffy carpet and wrenching Steve’s fly open. But the darkness retreats when Billy pulls Steve’s large, rapidly-stiffening cock out of his boxers. When Billy tastes salty sweat at the base of Steve’s dick he shudders back into his own consciousness, unaware that he ever left. Billy groans, licking up the underside of Steve’s dick in one broad stroke and pausing when he reaches the head. He looks up at Steve, at the hazy lust in his eyes, and for one brief moment is struck with the insane thought that he wishes he could stay exactly like this, forever. Down on his knees, Steve’s hands in his hair, Steve’s huge cock in front of his face. Surrounded by Steve’s heady, intoxicating smell.

Billy grins lazily, tongue poking out between his teeth. “What can I say, baby? You get me hot.”

Steve’s jaw drops when Billy calls him _baby,_ and he groans, dragging Billy’s head back down to his cock. Billy wraps his lips around the fat head and sucks hard, gripping the base. Twisting his hand on the upstroke, he bobs his head, struggling to suck down Steve’s impressive length. Every time he sinks his mouth down lower on Steve’s cock, he tries to take more, inching closer and closer to Steve’s thatch of pubic hair each time. His jaw aches, saliva spilling from the corners of his lips and his dick is rock-hard against his black briefs. He can hear Steve’s strained little huffs of breath above him and can tell he’s trying to stay quiet. Billy’s determined to draw some louder sounds out of Steve, hear him moan and swear. He pulls off of Steve’s dick with a wet _pop_ and takes a moment to compose himself, breathing hard through his nostrils and willing his throat to relax. He closes his eyes and centers himself, focusing on opening his jaw and lengthening the line of his throat. He opens his eyes and looks up at Steve.

Steve could swear he sees Billy’s icy blue eyes turn black. He blinks and it’s gone. Probably a trick of the light.

Billy places his hands over Steve’s on the back of his head and pushes. Steve gets the message, guiding Billy back down onto his dick. This time, Billy sucks Steve down all the way, nose pressed into Steve’s pubes, a tiny gurgling noise at the back of his throat. Steve moans, long and loud. 

“Jesus, Billy, you’re amazing, how did you - fuck! _”_ He gasps when Billy pulls up to swirl his tongue around the head, then swallows him back down, hollowing his cheeks and sucking even harder. Thicker, bubbly saliva rolls down Steve’s shaft, covering Billy’s hands and dripping down his chin. 

Billy’s burning up inside, aching to touch Steve, but he can’t wait a second longer to get his hand on his own dick. With Steve still in his mouth, he reaches back with both hands to grab Steve’s ass and drags him forward onto the edge of the sofa, encouraging Steve to fuck his mouth. When Steve gets the message and starts thrusting, head thrown back and low-pitched groans echoing in the quiet living room, Billy unzips his jeans and yanks his dick out. He uses the saliva on his hands as lube and jerks, humping against the side of the sofa, the rough fabric creating delicious friction against the head as he swathes his foreskin up and down the length.

Steve’s thighs start to tremble and his thrusts become much shallower, gripping Billy’s hair hard and moving Billy’s mouth over the very tip of his cock. Billy knows what’s coming next and he wraps his hand around the base of Steve’s cock and starts jerking it, keeping pace with his other hand on his own cock. Steve pulls the tip out of Billy’s mouth but keeps it close, nearly resting on Billy’s bottom lip. Billy pushes against Steve’s hand on his head, trying to swallow down his cock again but Steve stops him. A pretty pink flush had spread from his face down to his chest, and he’s panting hard as he stares down at Billy.

“I’m - um, I’m about to-”

“Do it, Harrington” Billy spits. “On my face. Cum all over me”.

Billy’s words seem to be the fatal blow to Steve’s stamina and his voice breaks as he yells “ _Fuck_ , Billy!”, painting Billy’s face with short spurts of hot cum. It mostly lands on the left side of Billy’s face, one glob dripping down over Billy’s eyebrow and clinging to his long eyelashes, another smeared in his moustache and in the seam of his lips. Billy catches as much as he can, eyes pinched shut and mouth wide open, tongue searching Steve’s cockhead, starving for the taste. 

When he’s sucked all he can off the head he licks his lips, then lifts the hem of his undershirt to do a cursory wipe of his face. When he deems it safe to crack his eyes open, he’s treated to the sight of Steve lying shirtless and red-faced on the sofa, looking fucked-out and sweet with his hand still stroking through Billy’s hair. Billy surges up and straddles Steve’s lap, spitting into his own hand and wrapping it around his dick once again. It only takes a few strokes before he’s cumming hard, shooting all over Steve’s flushed, heaving chest. Billy wishes he had a camera as he watches the cum slide down Steve’s chest, catching in his chest hair. He sits on Steve’s lap, jaw aching, lips sore and swollen, trying to catch his breath. 

Billy can’t help but drag the tip of his thumb through Steve’s chest hair, swiping up a few beads of cum and bringing them carefully to Steve’s lips. Steve stares at Billy through heavy lids and doesn’t break eye contact as Billy pushes his thumb inside Steve’s pink mouth. He watches in amazement as Steve _sucks_ on his thumb, swirling his tongue around in a reprise of Billy’s dick-sucking technique. When he pulls his thumb out of Steve’s warm mouth, Steve grabs his hand, kissing the tops of his knuckles gently.

Steve giggles, a dorky grin on his face. “Man, you’re like, _covered_ in cum. It’s in your eyelashes.”

Before Billy can retort, Steve cups his chin and brings Billy’s face close to his own. He uses his shucked t-shirt to carefully wipe the sticky mess off Billy’s face. When he reaches his eye, Steve frowns. “It’s kind of caught in your eyelashes. Close your eyes”. 

Billy can hardly believe it when Steve _licks_ his eyelashes, then uses the shirt to wipe the cum off with the gentlest of touches. It’s weird, it’s kind of gross, and it fills Billy with an enormous, ballooning happiness that feels like it could burst his ribs apart. He can scarcely believe his luck. It’s pure, simple joy, and it’s been so long since Billy’s felt it that he thought he wasn’t capable of it anymore.

Billy clamps down hard on all that emotion before he blurts out something he can’t take back. But he can’t contain his smile.

"Thanks Harrington, you’re a real pal. I’ll be right back, just grabbing my smokes.”

“Can you grab mine too? I think I left them in the pocket of my jeans from yesterday.”

Billy nods, then clambers off Steve’s lap and jogs up the stairs to the bedroom, suddenly full of energy. He struggles and fails to keep the stupid grin off his face, already locking away the memory of his morning with Steve in the masturbation vault in his mind.

As he rifles through the pile of discarded clothes on the floor, looking for Steve’s cigarettes, a foreign voice in his head startles him. It’s quiet, but it speaks to him directly.

_Get out of this house._

It sounds like Billy’s inner voice but it’s warped somehow, a funhouse mirror image of Billy. Billy can’t ignore it. Fear plunges into his heart like a sharp icicle.

_You got what you wanted. You’re done with him now. Leave._

“Billy?” Steve calls from downstairs. “You better not be snooping through my shit!”

Billy can’t respond. He’s frozen, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. He takes a shuddering breath, screwing his eyes shut and shaking his head, as if trying to dislodge the voice.

_He doesn’t care about you. He’s using you. He doesn’t want to be with you. He wants you to leave_.

Billy’s in a fugue state, catatonic with fear. He can barely breathe as he quickly dresses, tears apart the room looking for his left shoe and car keys. His body is begging him to give up control, let the voice take the wheel and guide his body. He’s resisting, but the voice’s presence seems to grow stronger and stronger. He doesn’t hear Steve come upstairs.

Steve breezes into the room, oblivious. “What, didja get lost or something? Too busy sniffing my underwear?” he laughs, but stops short when he sees Billy’s stricken expression. He approaches Billy slowly. “Hey, are you okay?” he asks, voice so gentle. He wraps his hand around Billy’s bicep.

_Don’t touch me!_

“Don’t touch me!” Billy shouts, wrenching his arm out of Steve’s grip. He shoves Steve hard, full of rage that doesn’t belong to him. Steve goes flying backwards, landing on his bed with a grunt and a thud. Billy’s heart breaks when Steve cranes his neck and looks at Billy, eyes wide and scared. He’s trying to say something to Billy but he’s winded from the shove, gasping for air. He’s no longer looking in Billy’s eyes. Instead, he’s staring at Billy’s left arm, pointing at it with a shaky hand.

Billy turns on his heel and leaves.

As Billy runs down the stairs and yanks the front door open, he wills himself to turn around, go back to Steve. But the dark presence distracts him with vision, memories that aren’t his. Flickering fluorescent lights in an abandoned office building, bloody handprints on the walls. A dark, empty elevator shaft, the floor too far down to see. Hundreds of rats clamouring over each other on a concrete floor. 

By the time Billy turns his keys in the ignition of the Camaro, he’s fully blacked out.  


  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone who took the time to read this. It's my first Harringrove fic and was so much fun to work on. Next chapter coming soon! If you'd like to chat, my tumblr url is she-stans-villains. Special thanks to Sasha (tumblr : ivashechkina) for beta-ing, and all the folks at the harringrove discord for their encouragement + inspiration.
> 
> Notes on dubcon: Billy has a sexual encounter with Steve while he is half-possessed by the Mindflayer. Billy is unaware that he's being possessed until after the encounter.


End file.
